Lloyds invests in HPC, Windows inside

Management Consultancy, a UK-based business management website, posted a short article last week on a recent move by Lloyds TSB to invest in HPC to improve its risk and valuation practices.

The introduction of HPC to support the bank’s global derivatives infrastructure has been accelerated as it faced increasing pressure to simulate a growing number of risk scenarios, said Ricky Higgins, IT director in the products and markets group at Lloyds TSB corporate markets division.

One twist? The company is deploying Windows HPC Server 2008, rather than Linux, although the article implies this wasn’t a purely technical decision

Lloyds TSB’s decision to roll out Microsoft’s Windows HPC Server 2008, as opposed to Linux – which is used by most financial services firms – was based on its long history as a Microsoft customer, said Higgins.

“If I were to use Linux, I would need a different skill set and it would add to the number of tools we have, therefore increasing costs rather than decreasing them,” he said.

Higgins went on to say that the company has achieved a 50% increase in trading volume as a result of the move, which was deployed in a single night following a two week pilot. No word on the hardware used.

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